Particle Burst

Sylvan: a web template

Brenden — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:56:55 +0000

Yes, my knack for designing web templates has gotten the best of me once more. The product of my latest burst of effort is Sylvan, a green and brown three-column template. I designed it with blog use in mind, but it could be used for several purposes. Here’s a screenshot:
(more…)

Google’s New Favicon

Brenden — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:35:52 +0000

Well this is rather strange. It would seem that Google has switched from its usual blue ‘G’ favicon to a purple ‘g’ favicon. In truth, I can’t see why this change would have been made, considering how recognizable Google’s current logo is. Perhaps this foreshadows a complete redesign of their logo, but I find that unlikely. It will most likely be back to normal by tomorrow (and this post will look rather strange). I’m most interested in seeing how many blog posts this will generate. Amazing how noticeable a slight change to a well-known site like Google can be.

The IBM Check

Brenden — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:51:49 +0000

“To Err is Human…” so goes the old truism, but luckily computers can often help in error correction. As anyone who has typed a long sequence of numbers (such as a credit card number) knows, it is extremely easy to make a mistake while typing. Common errors include typing the wrong number, switching two numbers, forgetting a number, and inserting an extra number.
(more…)

OTP Manager

Brenden — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:38:19 +0000

Encryption with a one-time pad is an extremely simple cryptographic method for hiding information. It involves the creation of a random key the size of the text to be encrypted and the modular addition of the two. I just finished up coding an application which offers some simple functions which make the implementation of a one-time pad somewhat simpler. Below is some information about one-time pads and the program.
(more…)

Post, Entry, or Article?

Brenden — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:28:32 +0000

While typing up some text for this blog a few days ago, I ran into a naming dilemma. What, I thought, should I call the tidbits I occasionally fling up into this website. The three terms which struck me as the most obvious were “post,” “entry,” and “article.” Now this is a rather trivial problem, but it caused me to think about the subtle connotative differences between the terms. “Post,” the most commonly used term, implies a degree of brevity. Even the least substantive of weblog updates could constitute a “post” (tumblr anyone?). Of course, there’s nothing wrong with extreme brevity, it’s just not the style I tend to use.
(more…)

Maze-Solving Program: Some Bugs

Brenden — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:49:57 +0000

As usual, a few unanticipated bugs showed up while I was testing the maze solver. The first one involved incomplete solutions being generated because the solver would move across a “junction piece” (a piece with three or more adjacent open squares) which had already been tagged as traveled. This disrupted the way the solver worked, leading to solutions with large chunks of the path missing. The solution to the problem is to make the solver turn back when it encounters a used junction piece instead of moving forward. (more…)

Maze-Solving Program: The Code

Brenden — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:09:03 +0000

In my last entry, I explained the fundamental functioning of the maze-solving program I wrote. In this post, I’ll show the code I used to get the algorithm from paper to pixels. It’s all done in Java.

The first thing to do was to create an array to represent the maze. As you can imagine, this step was quite tedious and quite mundane, so I won’t bother posting any of the code from it. In the array, I used zeros to represent walls and ones to represent open areas. When printed out, the array might look something like this:
(more…)

Maze-Solving Program: The Algorithm

Brenden — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:28:08 +0000

I’ve always been interested by the way a seemingly complicated task can be broken down into simple steps and executed by a computer program. Things such as neural networks and image-recognition software have always fascinated me. Roughly a month ago, I began pondering how a program able to solve mazes could be written. I chose to begin work on a maze-solving program because of the challenge involved and because it provides a good springboard into other topics such as topology and tree structures. The first step was to think of an algorithm which could not only find the ends of mazes (a simple left-turning program can do that), but could actually print out a decent solution to the maze. (more…)

Garfield - Garfield = Actually Funny

Brenden — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:56:15 +0000

Yes, it’s true. See for yourself.

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?

Laughing at a Garfield comic? A new phenomenon indeed!

Redesigned

Brenden — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 20:28:42 +0000

As you can see (or can’t if you’ve never been here before) the site has been freshly redesigned. It all started a few months ago when I became too tired of the rough spots on the old design. They rubbed up against me every time I looked at it, eventually driving me to double-click my Inkscape shortcut and begin fiddling with new colors and layouts. (more…)